World Literature: Sandra Cisneros Celebrates 40 Years of The House on Mango Street

City of Asylum welcomes Sandra Cisneros to Pittsburgh to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her contemporary classic The House on Mango Street.

“Visiting the Pilsen section of Chicago recently I thought of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street—how it was born on these streets grew wings and is now being celebrated in a 40th-anniversary edition by Everyman’s Library (as well as an opera at the Glimmerglass Festival). Generations have come of age with its whip-smart soulful narrator Esperanza Cordero who yearns for a “house of her own.” This small irrepressible book—with its hopscotch-like epiphanies—has provided a fictional home to them all.” —Anderson Tepper Curator for World Literature at City of Asylum 

The House on Mango Street is a national bestseller and one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. The novel is acclaimed by critics beloved by readers of all ages taught in schools and universities alike and translated around the world. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness it means waiting.” This year marks the release of a special 40th anniversary hardcover edition of the beloved coming-of-age novel with a new introduction by John Phillip Santos.  

Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula it makes a world through people and their voices and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous novel is a celebration of the power of telling your own story and of being proud of where you’re from. 

You can purchase your own copy of Sandra’s book The House on Mango Street at City of Asylum Bookstore.

Host or Publisher City of Asylum Pittsburgh